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The world of benefits is constantly changing. Keeping up with all of the new health insurance regulations is a full time job even for your broker. We have condensed volumes of reading into this short briefing. The following articles are a few of the highlights of what we have been following.

WHITE HOUSE TOUTS SLOW INCREASE IN HEALTH CARE COSTS

Now for some good news about the state of health insurance. Personal healthcare costs rose in the 12 months ending in May at the slowest rate in the last 50 years, as spending on hospital and nursing home services declined, the White House announced Monday. This is a trend that LSA has been observing over the past 14 months. The bad news, fees, taxes and assessments associated with the Affordable Care Act are certain to add another 6-8% onto increased healthcare costs. For a further explanation of those fees, contact your broker here at LSA.

A fair amount of time will be spent covering the war of words and commercials and campaign events over Obamacare as we get closer to the law's October 1st launch date. But to put a marker down, almost nothing anybody says about this law between now and then matters. Really.

That's been true for years now. Look at this graph of the Kaiser Family Foundation's healthcare tracking poll. Really study it. Opinions on Obamacare have been basically stable since 2010. That's been true despite all the rhetoric and all the elections and all the Supreme Court decisions and all the ads. The law has been slightly unpopular for three years. There's never been a sustained period in which it became popular, or very unpopular.

The most notable trend on that graph, in fact, is that over the last six months or so, both the "favorable" and "unfavorable" numbers have fallen and "don't know/refused" has risen. So that's been the main outcome of this war for public opinion: A slightly larger proportion of the country is confused about the Affordable Care Act. Congrats, spinmeisters.

This speaks to a broader truth about political rhetoric: The things people in Washington say always have less influence than people in Washington think. It's true when presidents are talking. It's true during national campaigns. And it's even truer for the continuing, bitter war over the health-care law, which everyone but real obsessives has tuned out.